The problem is
Sorry I'm new. That's the best I could write the problem. It's easy to find the determinant with expansion by minors but to get the simplified solution involves some sort of clever trick that I don't know of. Here's what I can get to.
There are many ways to factor out terms from this.
There are even more ways of course. None of these ways lead me to the simple solution:
Can someone explain how to factor this? Thanks.

August 7th 2007, 02:43 AM

JakeD

Quote:

Originally Posted by binarybob0001

The problem is
Sorry I'm new. That's the best I could write the problem. It's easy to find the determinant with expansion by minors but to get the simplified solution involves some sort of clever trick that I don't know of. Here's what I can get to.
There are many ways to factor out terms from this.
There are even more ways of course. None of these ways lead me to the simple solution:
Can someone explain how to factor this? Thanks.

Multiply out

as you wanted.

August 7th 2007, 06:28 AM

binarybob0001

You can only do that if you already know the solution. What if you didn't know the solution? I would have just stopped thinking I was done. Is there a systematic way of arriving at that result?